D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Wednesday that she’s proposing a 5.05% increase in the amount of money allocated for each student in the city’s public and charter schools, amounting to an additional $144 million in funding.

The announcement of the new spending — the second year that per-pupil funding has jumped more than 5% — marks the start of the city’s annual school budget process, when parents, teachers, staff, lawmakers, and city officials haggle over the details of how D.C. should spend the $2.3 billion pot meant for the 100,791 students that attend traditional public schools and public charter schools.

But it also comes amidst brewing tensions between D.C. Public Schools and the D.C. Council, which last year passed a new law spelling out how money should be allocated — a law DCPS officials admitted this week they aren’t exactly following.

Bowser’s proposed bump in what’s known as the uniform per-student funding formula — the main tool to determine how much money individual schools get — amounts to $500 above the current base funding of $12,419 per student. (Additional funding is added depending on grade level, special education, and for at-risk students.) The proposed budget would also increase spending on school supplies by 7.5%, to better reflect the increased expenses for everything that schools use on a daily basis.

“This budget reflects another historic commitment to our students and families, and ensures we are delivering targeted supports to our school communities, with an emphasis on equity and sustainability for our system. We will continue to invest in and build a public school system that puts more of our students on pathways to success and delivers robust compensation for our incredible educators,” said Bowser in a statement.

In an interview with DCist/WAMU, DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said the additional spending builds on a new budget model “designed to drive resources where there’s greater need.”

But the question of exactly how DCPS establishes its budgets for individual schools is a current point of contention with the council, which in December passed a bill mandating that almost no school can get less money in the coming school year than it does in the current one. (Traditionally, schools would lose funding if they see an enrollment decline.) Lawmakers said the requirement would help ensure consistency and predictability in school-level funding, and bring additional transparency to a budget process that some parents, advocates, and even lawmakers say is often opaque and challenging to understand.

Earlier this week, though, Ferebee and Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn told the council that while they were seeking to follow the spirit of the new law, they may not exactly follow the letter of it. “Unfortunately, given our timeline in the budget process and the complexity of our budget and the complications of how the law was written, we could not incorporate that into this year’s budget cycle, but are committed to working with the council in future years,” Ferebee told DCist/WAMU.

In an interview, Mendelson rejected the claim that DCPS could not have budgeted according to the new law he wrote.

“They are just making excuses for not following the law. They’ve known since early December about this law and they act like they’ve only known for the past three weeks. This is willful on their part. It’s unfortunate because this is what DCPS has done year after year, which is to hurt individual schools and pretend they didn’t, which is why there is so much turmoil and turnover,” he said.

In a statement later on Wednesday afternoon, Mendelson said he had a chance to review some of the proposed school-level budgets, and accused Ferebee and Bowser of “traumatizing public schools by proposing substantial budget cuts.”

“The chancellor and mayor do this to schools every year, except this year they’re also violating the law,” he added. “Not only is this not following the letter of the law, it’s not even close to the spirit of the law. The law requires stable funding. If anything, schools need more money not less.”

Separately, D.C. officials say they will submit a budget proposal to cover the cost of a new contract with the Washington Teachers’ Union, which guarantees retroactive pay raises for 5,500 DCPS teachers. A similar pay raise for charter school teachers is also expected, though it remains unclear how D.C. will choose to make the money available.

This post was updated with a statement from D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.